Taking work now — the first look is freeWhole sets posted in from anywhere in the UK, or handed in at ten drop-off pointsQuicker still, give us a ring:0800 6890668
RARRAID Array Data Recovery 0800 6890668 Price my job
RAR / Every level and layout / RAID 0

RAID 0 · stripe set · fakeRAID · Intel RST · Thunderbolt · scratch disks · MFT · superblock

RAID 0 data recovery. No parity, no margin, and nothing to check the geometry against but the data itself.

RAID 0 stripes data across two or more drives and keeps no copy and no parity, so that a single member failing takes the whole set with it. It lives in editing suites and workstations, in Thunderbolt boxes and on Intel RST and fakeRAID chipsets, and it arrives here in three states: one member has failed, the order was lost when the drives were moved or the controller replaced, or a member was read on another host and initialised. The bench's problem is the opposite of RAID 5's: with no parity there is nothing to XOR to zero, so the order and stripe size are found from the file system's own structures, the MFT, the ext4 superblock and group descriptors, the partition table on the first member, and from the entropy boundaries where one file's data gives way to another at a stripe edge. A stripe set of two to four members is £500 + VAT upwards after the free look, fixed in writing, 5–10 days at the bench.

Free first lookOne fixed figure in writingNo data, no bill on most jobsReturn postage paid

Rather talk it through? An engineer answers the bench line
0800 6890668

Power down. Label every slot before a drive comes out. Do not rebuild, do not force a drive online, do not import or clear a foreign configuration, do not initialise, and do not run chkdsk, fsck, zpool import -F or mdadm --create on the members. A rebuild reads every sector of every survivor and writes to the replacement; each of the commands writes to the drives. On images, all of them are reversible. On the originals, none of them is.

RAID 0 symptoms, and what each means.

Not listed? Describe it on the form →
One member failed; volume goneThe failed member is the job. It is imaged; the set reassembled from images.Do not delay
Drives moved; volume not recognisedThe order, or the host. Do not initialise anything.Do not delay
Controller replaced; volume goneThe metadata format changed. The set is rebuilt from the data.Do not delay
One member initialised on a PCIts start was overwritten. The rest is usually intact.Do not delay
Files open but are corrupt beyond a certain sizeStripe size or order wrong on a set someone reassembled.Everyday job
Volume shows half its sizeOne member missing from a set the host assembled anyway.Do not delay
Packing it and posting it: power down, photograph the controller's screen or export its log, and write the slot number on each drive with a marker before it comes out of its carrier. Send every member of the set, including the one that failed first; it holds the stripes the rebuild never reached. Each drive travels in an anti-static bag inside its own padding, in a box with nothing able to move. Send the controller if it was replaced or holds an encryption key; otherwise it stays. Insure the parcel for what the data is worth, use a tracked service, and know that the posting address is not printed anywhere on this site; it arrives by email in reply to the form, with a booking sheet to print; the sheet inside the parcel is what matches it to your enquiry when it is opened. Or hand the sealed parcel in at the nearest of ten drop-off points, your name on the outside and the sheet inside; say where you are on the form and it comes by email. We pay the postage home either way. The whole of it is written up on the guide to packing and posting.

What it tolerates, what fails it, and what the bench has to find.

Finding the order without parityThe partition table and the file system's boot sector sit on the first member; the MFT or the superblock says where the next structures should be, and which member has them says the order. Entropy at stripe edges, where compressed data gives way to text or zeros, says the stripe size.
A missing memberIf one member cannot be imaged, every file larger than a stripe has holes in it every stripe. Small files that sit wholly inside surviving stripes are carved out; large files are not whole, and the free look says so.
Controllers and boxesIntel RST, NVIDIA and AMD fakeRAID keep their metadata at the end of the members; Thunderbolt and USB boxes keep the stripe in a bridge chip and a small record on the drives. A different host reads the drives as raw and offers to initialise them.
Initialised, not erasedAn initialise writes a partition table over the first sectors of one member. On a stripe set that is one stripe's worth of the volume's start, and the file system's backup structures usually replace it.

What a reconstruction has to determine.

Describe yours to us →
Unknown Where it is read from What goes wrong when it is guessed
Member orderPartition table and file-system boot sector on member 0; MFT or superblock chainsEverything past the first stripe reads wrongly
Stripe sizeEntropy boundaries; file-system structure spacingFiles larger than one stripe interleave
Data offsetMetadata; the position of the first structure on member 0Volume start missed
Missing memberWhich files have holes at which spacingCarving misattributes fragments

From the parcel arriving to your files going back.

Work we have closed →
01

Logged the day it lands, and the first look costs nothing Free

A case number goes on the parcel and a number on every member the day it is opened, matched to the slot you wrote on it. Each member goes on the imager its interface needs, never on a controller, and its metadata is read before a sector is: the level, the order, the stripe size, the event counts that say which member is current and which dropped out first. An engineer settles what has happened to the set and how much of it can honestly be read back. Back to you come two things together: a straight note of what is liftable and what is not, plus one figure, fixed and written down. Accept it, or decline and owe us nothing.

Nothing to pay for lookingA single figure, put in writingNo rebuilds, no imports, no initialise
02

Every member imaged, including the one that failed first

Every drive in the set is imaged sector by sector, weak areas last, on hardware that controls every retry, with a map of what could not be read kept for each. Members with failed heads go to the clean bench first; that is the drive site's work and the same bench does it. The drive that dropped out first is imaged too, because it still holds every stripe written before it dropped, and a rebuild that stalled part-way never reached them.

Sector by sector, weak areas lastThe first-dropped member included
03

The geometry, from the metadata or from the parity

A stripe set with no parity is proved from its own content. The first member is found from the partition table; the order from where the file system's next structures fall; the stripe size from the entropy edges and the spacing of those structures; and a candidate assembly is tested by opening the largest files, because a wrong geometry corrupts every file bigger than one stripe.

Metadata first, parity secondOrder, stripe, rotation, offset
04

Assembled in software, and repaired on the virtual volume

The set is put together from the images in software, with nothing written to any of them: the current members in, the stale member used only to fill holes a survivor could not give. The file system is checked and repaired on a copy of the virtual volume, VMFS and CSV volumes opened and the virtual machines' disks extracted, databases repaired where they need it. The originals are not touched again.

Nothing written to the imagesVirtual machines and databases opened
05

You see the file list before you pay

What was recovered is listed for you first, and only then does a bill exist. Approve the list and it is invoiced; turn it down and it is not — and where nothing has come back, most jobs carry no charge at all. Recovered data travels home on fresh media bought in for your job, with the postage at our end. Your case is not closed until you have opened the files on a machine of your own.

No charge until you accept the figureFresh media, supplied with the job5–10 days at the bench

What arrives most often

  • The failed member is the whole job. Everything hinges on imaging it; the survivors are easy.
  • Do not initialise a member a PC cannot read. It is a stripe with controller metadata on it, not a blank drive.
  • Say what the stripe size was, if you set it. It shortens the search. Most people did not set it, and the bench finds it anyway.
  • Large files are the test. A geometry that opens a 4GB video file whole is right; one that opens the small files and not the large is wrong by a stripe.

One job, followed all the way through.

UK · RAR-2026-0605JOB LOGGED ✓

A two-drive RAID 0 in a Thunderbolt box holding an editing suite's project drive, one member failed with a head fault, the bridge's metadata intact and the order unknown after the drives came out

The failed member had a head swap on the clean bench and was imaged with its weak areas last; the other was imaged directly. The partition table on one image gave the first member, the HFS+ catalog's position gave the order, and a 128KB stripe was confirmed by opening the largest project files whole. The volume was assembled from the two images and the projects copied out.

99.9% of the volume recovered6 days here, and back by post
Illustrative example — replace with a genuine case

What helps, and what harms.

Do this much first

  • Power down and label which drive was which
  • Send every member, and the box if it is a Thunderbolt or USB one
  • Say what the stripe size was, if you set it
  • Tell us what the volume held and which files matter

What sets us back

  • Initialising a member a PC offers to
  • Recreating the stripe set to see
  • Trying the drives in another box
  • Assuming one failed member means the set is gone

Questions answered before you commit.

One drive of my RAID 0 failed. Is everything gone?

Not if the failed drive can be imaged, which it usually can. The set is reassembled from the images. If it genuinely cannot be read, only files small enough to sit inside surviving stripes come back.

The drives were moved and the volume disappeared. Is the data there?

Almost certainly. The order or the host changed. The bench reads the order from the file system's own structures; do not initialise anything.

How do you find the stripe size without parity?

From the data: entropy boundaries at stripe edges, the spacing of file-system structures, and by opening the largest files, which only assemble whole under the right geometry.

What does it cost?

£500 + VAT upwards for two to four members after the free look, fixed in writing.

How long does it take?

5–10 days at the bench.

Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.

RAID 10 →JBOD, spanned and dynamic disks →3ware, HighPoint and fakeRAID →Promise VTrak and Pegasus →

Nothing gets worse while it is powered down.

Looking at it is free. Back comes a list of what opened and what did not, together with a single price to finish, set down in writing while you are still free to say no. On most jobs an invoice only follows the data. Until that list reaches you, leave the server off and the drives in their slots.

0800 6890668

Price my jobPacking and posting